School Bus Driver Fired For Offering Lunch Money

byJudy DuttonJun 06, 2013

Talk about a bus driver with
heart: When Johnny Cook at Haralson County Middle School in Georgia heard a
student on his bus was denied lunch because he was forty cents short, he was
shocked. He turned to the obvious outlet to vent his frustration: a post on
Facebook. According to Cook, he “had it on my mind and had it on my heart and simply made the
Facebook post that said that, ‘Mr. Johnny I’m hungry,’ and told the story
exactly like it was.”

Cook also posted his phone number, explaining the “next time we have a kid
at the register for 40 cent and we can’t feed him, please call me. I’ll scrape
up the money.” From there, Cook told CBS news, “About 200
people liked it, loved it, did all the things that Facebook does and it just
caught fire.”

One individual who didn’t give Cook’s post a thumbs up was the school’s
superintendent Brett Stanton, who called Cook into his office the next day and
told him to apologize for slandering the name of their school—or be fired. Cook
refused to apologize, and was terminated. Undeterred, Cook posted this news on
Facebook, which quickly racked up more than 155,000 shares.

But Stanton points out that the kid in question wasn’t denied lunch, but
didn’t want one: Video camera footage clearly shows that student never went
through the lunch line at all. Yet the boy, who remains nameless, wrote a
statement about what happened backing Cook’s story: “On
Tuesday, May 21st, I could not eat lunch at school because I did not have lunch
money. I got my tray and because I did not have any money the lunchroom lady
told me to put the tray back and go sit down.”

Cook may have lost his job, but he doesn’t regret
his decision. “I’m
proud of the reaction and I’m proud I was able to make a stand when some
people may not be able to,” he says. “And maybe I was able to make a
change, in some way, cause a little change.”